Gardena Girls Are 2nd in City

For the second consecutive year, the Gardena High girls had to settle for being second best in the City Section track and field meet.

Taking advantage of its depth in the sprints, University finished with 50 points to take the title by 14 over runner-up Gardena at the City finals Thursday night at Birmingham High in Van Nuys. It was the first title for University.

Gardena Coach Al Hearvey said he had hoped his team would give University a closer battle, but he wasn’t too upset after the meet.

“As long as we got second place, I’m not disappointed,” Hearvey said. “That’s where I thought we should have finished. I’m disappointed we didn’t win, but we’re young and we’ll be back next year.”

The Mohicans didn’t wrap up second place until the final event of the meet, when they finished fourth in the 1,600-meter relay in 4 minutes 7.06 seconds.

Gardena had its only individual victory when junior Latarya McCarty took the 200 in 25.11 seconds. The win surprised McCarty because she had only the third-fastest qualifying time in the City preliminaries last week.

“When I came in, I thought I was maybe going to get second,” she said. “But I psyched myself up for this. I didn’t know how I was going to do because I was tired, but once I hit the curve I knew I had it.”

McCarty also anchored Gardena’s 400 relay team that finished second to University in a time of 49.14, and sophomore Lavon Wade finished second in the triple jump with a leap of 36-feet-7 3/4.

That gave the Gardena girls three qualifiers for the State meet next week. The top three finishers in each event qualify for State.

The performance of the girls made up for a disappointing eighth-place finish by the Gardena boys’ team. The Mohicans, who placed second in the meet last year, had 19 points.

Easily the most disappointed member of the Mohicans was senior distance runner Morris Giddens.

After winning the 1,600 in 4:20.39, Giddens was in position to win the 3,200 when he tripped and fell on the final turn and had to settle for eighth. Alvaro Mejia of Birmingham won the event.

Giddens said he had little chance to recover after the fall.

“Once I went down I got up pretty fast,” he said. “But when I saw how much the pack was ahead of me, I knew I’d have to be Carl Lewis to catch up. It’s just so disappointing to have something like that happen after I prepared all year for this.”

Two other area athletes also won events. Keisha Griffis of Westchester won the 100 hurdles in a City-record 14.98, and Adanna Davis of San Pedro won the shotput with a put of 37-4 1/2.

Six other area athletes qualified for State.

Among the girls, Westchester finished second in the 1,600 relay; Dana Warren of Narbonne placed second in the high jump; Nicole Kleiner of San Pedro was third in the 800, and Carson was third in the 400 relay.

Among the boys, Rick McCray of Carson finished third in the 800, and Roberto Gutierrez of Banning was third in the 300 hurdles.